Title Details

Kyle Johns is a principal software developer at Microsoft, where he is currently a member of the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Team. After receiving a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Utah, he designed 3D graphics hardware for flight simulators at Evans and Sutherland. He joined Microsoft as one of the original members of the DirectX Team and then went on to help develop the graphics system software in the early days of the Xbox project. Recently he has been enjoying the opportunity to apply his 20 years of 3D graphics experience to the field of robotics by developing the Robotics Developer Studio Simulation Environment.

Trevor Taylor is a consultant in the field of robotics education. After 20 years in the IT industry, including co - founding a consulting company that became a Microsoft Solution Provider Partner, he moved to the Queensland University of Technology in 2002. For six years he taught a variety of subjects, including Visual Basic and Web development using ASP.NET. During this period he also worked part - time on a doctorate in computer vision and robotics. In early 2008, Trevor left QUT to concentrate on developing course materials for teaching robotics and to finish writing his thesis. Trevor has worked with MRDS since the very first Community Technology Preview in June 2006 and is an active and well - known contributor to the community.

Foreword.

Introduction.

Part I: Robotics Developer Studio Fundamentals.

Chapter 1: Exploring Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.

Chapter 2: Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR).

Chapter 3: Decentralized Software Services (DSS).

Chapter 4: Advanced Service Concepts.

Part II: Simulations.

Chapter 5: The MRDS Visual Simulation Environment.

Chapter 6: Extending the MRDS Visual Simulation Environment.

Chapter 7: Using Orchestration Services to Build a Simulation Scenario.

Chapter 8: Simulating Articulated Entities.

Chapter 9: Adventures in Simulation.

Part III: Visual Programming Language.

Chapter 10: Microsoft Visual Programming Language Basics.

Chapter 11: Visually Programming Robots.

Chapter 12: Visual Programming Examples.

Part IV: Robotics Hardware.

Chapter 13: Using MRDS with Robotics Hardware.

Chapter 14: Remotely Controlling a Mobile Robot.

Chapter 15: Using a Robotic Arm.

Chapter 16: Autonomous Robots.

Chapter 17: Writing New Hardware Services.

Index.